Orange to Soothe the Reykjavik Streets 1/25/09
A new protest movement has been started in Iceland, MBL.is reports: the Orange Protesters. A statement from the group says that Orange is a peaceful group of protesters, made up of people opposed to the violence of the last few days.
An Orange representative met with a police representative on Thursday to explain that protesters wearing orange clothes will be peaceful and oppose violence. Orange clothes will be the equivalent of a white flag to mark out peaceful protesters, the movement says.
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Reykjavik Riots: tear gas from police point of view 1/22/09 [comments (24)]
Seven police officers were injured when the protests got out-of-hand for the second day in a row, according to a press release from the Reykjavik police. Just like on Tuesday, stones and glass bottles were used to attack officers yesterday as well, they say. More>>
Iceland's #1 export, fairy-musician Bjork, in forest and on magazine
Iceland to appoint openly gay interim PM
REYKJAVIK, Iceland – The woman expected to become Iceland's interim prime minister is an openly gay former flight attendant who rose through the political ranks to lead a new leftist government.
Johanna Sigurdardottir, the island nation's 66-year-old social affairs minister, began as an union organizer for flight attendants and is now among the country's longest-serving lawmakers.
Both political parties forming Iceland's new coalition government support her appointment — and a decision could be announced as early as Thursday.
More>>Icelandic Religious Landscape
(wikipedia)
BuddhismThere are
Buddhist Web sites based in Iceland such as
Karuna from the Tibetan splinter group, the
New Kadampa Tradition. Construction of a Theravada Thai temple is also underway. Óskar Ingólfsson is a contact person for Zen in Iceland. There is also an Icelandic Buddhist Association with a few hundred members. In addition, Rev. José M. Tirado, a Jodo Shinshu priest, poet, and activist with an extensive background in Zen, Vajrayana, and Fourth Way studies, has taught an eclectic blend in a meditation-based counseling program several times in Iceland.
Only 11% of Icelanders "don't believe in any sort of spirit, God, or life force," according to a 2004
Eurobarometer study entitled "Social Values, Science, and Technology"
[Ref]. This is lower than Norway or the United Kingdom, while expressed belief in God was about the same in Iceland as in the UK and higher than in most of the
Scandinavian countries. The plurality (and near majority) of Icelanders express a belief in a "spirit or life force" rather than in "God" or a generalized disbelief.
Religion in Iceland was initially
Norse Paganism, which was commonly believed by
Vikings (from 874 to 1000 A.D.). Later, the nation became half-Christian and then more fully Christian. This increasing Christianization culminated in the
Pietism period when non-Christian entertainments were discouraged. At present, the population is overwhelmingly, if nominally, Lutheran. However, Baptist, Catholic, Jehovah's Witness, Mormon, Muslim, and other faiths exist.
Iceland Buddhist Association wants to build templeBuddhist Channel from the Iceland Review, 2/4/07 Reykjavík, Iceland -- Buddhists in Iceland have submitted a request to Minister of Justice and Ecclesiastical Affairs, Björn Bjarnason, for a lot near Reykjavík to build a Buddhist temple.
The lot they want is near Vífilsstadir, an old farm and tuberculosis asylum in the Reykjavík suburb of Gardabaer, Fréttabladid reports. According to Páll Júlíusson, the former chairman of the Thai-Icelandic Association, a Thai millionaire has promised to finance the construction of a Buddhist temple in Iceland.
The lot currently belongs to the Icelandic state. Bjarnason wrote in a letter to Gardabaer mayor Gunnar Einarsson that Júlíusson suggested Bjarnason hand over the lot on behalf of the government to Gardabaer, which would then hand it over to the Buddhist Association.
It is reported Júlíusson has also approached Einarsson with this matter. Bjarnason wrote in the letter to Einarsson that he would like to hear his opinion about handing over the lot before taking any actions.
Iceland's Genetic Fingerprint
"Largest genetic snapshot of Iceland"
WASHINGTON: A team of scientists has presented the largest-to-date genetic snapshot of
Iceland as it was about 1,000 years ago. The scientists, from deCODE genetics, completed the largest study of ancient DNA from a single population ever undertaken.
Analyzing mitochondrial DNA, which is passed from mother to offspring, from 68 skeletal remains, the study provides a detailed look at how a contemporary population differs from that of its
ancestors. The results confirm previous deCODE work that used genetics to test the history of Iceland as recorded in the sagas.
These studies demonstrated that the country seems to have been settled by men from Scandinavia -- the Vikings -- but that the majority of the original female inhabitants were from the coastal regions of Scotland and Ireland, areas that regularly suffered raids by Vikings in the years around the settlement of Iceland 1,100 years ago.
The current study further shows that the gene pool of contemporary Icelanders appears to have evolved rapidly over the intervening thousand years.
As a result, the original female settlers are genetically less closely related to present-day Icelanders, and instead more closely related to the present day populations of Scotland, Ireland, and Scandinavia, as well as those of north-western and south-western Europe.
This is a demonstration of a phenomenon known as "genetic drift." In essence, in any population, certain individuals will have more offspring and, by chance and in this case over the course of 35 generations, many more descendants than others.
As a result, particularly in a small population, the genetic variety of the original population can decrease and change over time. In this study, only mitochondrial DNA was studied, but the same phenomenon applies to the Y chromosome, which is passed from fathers to sons, and to any other part of the genome.
"This study is a major contribution to the use of ancient DNA studies in tracing the history not just of single populations, but of our species and how we spread from Africa to every corner of the globe," said Kari Stefansson, CEO of deCODE.
